The Last of Us: Hunter or Hunted? Part 1

Freshly fallen snow lines the streets of the deserted Lakeside town, crunching beneath their boots as they move towards the buildings towards the centre of what had once been some sort of resort. The four scavengers move cautiously but quickly, worried that reports of Fireflies encroaching further and further into their territory might mean a hard fight for what would probably turn out be a measly amount of supplies. Wordlessly, the Hunters split up and take up positions that allows them to maximise coverage of the snow-laden resort.

Climbing to the roof of a low-slung cottage, the man with the sniper rifle scans the area thoroughly, looking out for the garish yellow uniforms of the Fireflies. Seeing no signs of life, he signals the others that the town is all-clear. The other three peel from cover and move in a V formation towards their first target, a large lonely cottage separated from the rest of the little lakeside commune. From his perch, the sniper continues to scan the area, determining that the reports must have been wrong or that the Fireflies had given up and gone home. Dropping noiselessly to the snow-covered ground, he makes his way into the house he was previously standing on top off through a conveniently-open window. Once inside, he searches for supplies and after meticulous searching of the small cottage, finds nothing of interest or utility. Worried that he's been away from the others for too long, he makes for the window to catch a glimpse or even establish contact with them.

As he approaches the window, he hears a shot ring out in the distance and all hell breaks loose. He hears the retort of gunfire from the house where he last saw his fellow Hunters. Snatching frantically at his sniper rifle, he dives to cover below the window and prays that nobody has seen him yet. Cautiously, he peeks through the window, scanning the area for targets. On the far side of the town, he sees a glint that can only be from a rifle scope and gingerly, he lifts the rifle to the window and peers through his own scope. From the magnified image of his scope, the Hunter manages sees a Firefly behind the glint with another Firefly probably acting as a spotter next to him. Breathing in, he lines up the shot and gently squeezes the trigger. The rifle adds a loud retort to the symphony of gunfire erupting across the idyllic whitewashed town as the man holding it attempts to bring the weapon back to bear for another short. One eye still glued to the scope, he sees the head of one of the Fireflies releasing a pink mist into the crisp winter air and satisfied with the result of his marksmanship, moves the weapon ever so gently to target the second Firefly.

Cannily, the other Firefly has dropped behind cover and grabbed his fallen compatriot's weapon. Moving frantically towards better cover, he scrambles across the snow with a rifle in one hand and a pistol in another, shooting wildly with the pistol out of sheer panic. The sniper takes a breath and leads the shot, slowly putting pressure on the trigger, waiting for the perfect moment to fire. The Firefly trips and the man with the sniper rifle pulls the trigger. Almost instantaneously, the round enters the Firefly's leg, causing him to shout in pain and fall even deeper into the snow. Cursing, the sniper works the bolt and loads another round into the chamber of his trusty weapon, sending another shot towards the fallen Firefly. Another one down and an unknown number to go. Peeling away from the window, the sniper moves cautiously towards the door, scanning the area ahead of him with his revolver in hand. With the area seemingly clear, he moves quickly towards the house his comrades are holed up, attracting the attention of the other Fireflies in the area. With a fusillade of shots whizzing past him, the Hunter increases his pace and dives through a window to escape the blizzard of lead headed his way. Grunting, the sniper gets back on his feet and moves further into the house, following the sound of gunfire coming from within the house. In the living room, he comes across his allies, two still up and one writhing in pain on the floor. As he approaches his compatriots, a nail bomb sails through one of the windows and detonates, killing his friends and sending various bits of shrapnel into his arms and legs.

to be continued

The Last of Us, Again

3 months ago, I paved through The Last of Us on both Normal and Hard difficulties. I loved every second of it. Without spoiling too much, I found myself crying and having to put down the controller from shock on at least one occasion by the end of my first playthrough.

I moved onto its engaging Multiplayer mode a few weeks later, when Renegade Sandwich and Brancake had received their copies. We desperately combed battlefields to feed the needs of our crumbling virtual clans. It wouldn't last though. We eventually got too busy, or too frustrated at the Multiplayer load times. Following the untimely demise of Renegade Sandwich's PS3, we basically left The Last of Us for other prospects.

Because The Last of Us is one of my most cherished gaming experiences, I suggested it to many of my friends. One of them was hesitant, so I offered to let him test it out at my place before his (totally inevitable) purchase. Watching him play the game again made me want to jump back in (not at the moment of course; that would make me a terrible host). Despite my attempts to convince him to bring it home, he left it my place.

Playing The Last of Us again obviously became quite tempting. So I'm stepping into Joel's shoes once more, but this time on Survivor difficulty. I tried it once, but the absence of a Listening Mode (Joel's ability to gauge enemy presence in the environment) made it hard for me to imagine how to survive for very long. Now that I'm a little older and a little bolder, maybe I can survive the hordes of Infected and Hunters and beat the game again.

I think I'm ready. Wish me luck!

Bernt Toast is an author at The Ops Centre. He is up to date on The Legend of Korra, and his futile attempts to firebend are amusing to watch.

Editor's Note: Unfortunately, due to the difficult nature of Survivor mode, Bernt Toast was killed in action. As a result, he will no longer be reporting from the field.

The Last of Us Field Notes: Swift, Silent, Deadly

This game. This game is really something else. The single player is fantastic and deserves a proper review but I neither have the time nor talent to flesh out how brilliant this game is. Instead, let's have a little skulk around Factions, the rather interesting multiplayer component for The Last of Us. Before we start off, let me just say that there are a lot of issues surrounding Factions, the most annoying of which is the huge connection problem that every Naughty Dog has had since Uncharted 2. Factions is undeniably fun, when you can connect to it. I know not everyone gets the "Error downloading config file" or "Error syncing levels" problem but if you Google it, you'll see it's a fairly big problem and there's been not a peep from SCEA or ND about what's actually going wrong and how to fix it and that irks me to no end because I love Factions and I would play it more but I cannot because of some crappy connection issues that have plagued me since Uncharted 2.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk Factions. This game mode is a fascinating and rather unique blend of stealth-based third person shooter gameplay combined with a challenge-based mission structure that affects off-screen survivors that you have to keep alive for "weeks" which is just through 7 games of Supply Raid or Survivor. The main objective of the game is to keep your little band of rag-tag Fireflies or Hunters alive for 12 weeks and, man oh man, is that a challenge. Keeping them healthy and well-fed isn't too hard. You just have to scavenge a lot during matches to get "supplies" or "parts"(converted into supplies at the end of the match). The supplies ensure that your clan is healthy and continues to grow while parts are used during a match as currency to upgrade your weapons or buy armour. As well as supplies and parts, you can also scavenge for crafting items just like in the single-player portion of the game.

Along the way, you are given "missions" which are basically just a front for getting you to complete certain challenges within 3 matches (or "days" using the game's terminology) with the penalty being losing members of your clan by a certain percentage, usually 60% or 100% and with each level of the challenge you complete, you mitigate the damage done to your clan. Now, I have a serious problem with this mode because there are very few challenges and most of them involve either killing or executing enemies which is damned hard in the first place. But worse, these missions require killing or executing enemies with particular weapons and it's not possible to keep using your same favourite weapon because the challenge criteria goes up with each time you pick it regardless of success or failure. Furthermore, these missions never bring you a positive result, just a mitigation of a negative result. I understand that this is keeping in the survivalist aspect and overall theme of the game but it is utterly ridiculous that 100% of my clan can get wiped out because I fail to complete a challenge considering that the missions usually involve getting attacked or attacking a rival faction. Realistically, not everyone's going to die because if you were really a smart survivor which you would have to be in this post-apocalyptic world, you'd be smart enough to mitigate your losses by bringing only those necessary to complete the job and packing off back-up and less able survivors to a safer location. But, no, even if I'm attacking a Firefly camp, I'm attacking them full-on with all my forces in one mass attack even though they're probably entrenched and have defences at the ready.

Other than the really annoying mission structure that makes no sense whatsoever and basically threatens to kill all my clan and force me to start all over for not completing some silly challenges, this mode is otherwise extremely fun. The two game modes available in Factions are, as previously mentioned, Supply Raid and Survivor. Both are basically team deathmatch with the twist being you only have 4 players on each team and fairly large maps to skulk around to find and eliminate each other. Survivor is exactly the same except you don't respawn during the rounds so if you're killed, bad luck, sit it out until the next round. The objective is the same, eliminate the enemy team and win as many rounds as possible in that way. Both game modes are extremely fun but it is a little disappointing that the multiplayer aspect of the game only offers team deathmatch style modes and no objective based ones like collecting as many parts as possible or some sort of domination style match. Furthermore, it seems a little strange that there are no Infected whatsoever. I think they should have tried including a game mode where one team is survivors and one team is Infected but I'm not a game developer so I don't know if that would be possible or keeping in line with what the development team wanted to do with the game. Maybe add in NPC Infected that hound you as you try eliminating the other team? Adds some challenge to the whole thing and maybe give an opportunity for both teams to cooperate before wiping each other out.

In terms of actual gameplay, this game requires a lot of patience and the ability to stay stealthy for extended periods of time. Like the title suggests, for you to win, you must be swift, silent and deadly all at the same time. If you're too slow, the enemy will be breathing down your neck with armour, upgraded weapons and crafted items like Molotovs (the bane of my existence in this game) or nail bombs. So, you have to move fast enough to gather supplies and crafting items to ensure that the enemy doesn't have a sharp advantage over you. You must be silent because noise reveals your location on the radar and moving too fast will lead you to an inevitable death if the enemy is smart enough to use listen mode to echo-locate your position. Lastly, you must be deadly because there is no time to mince about and take your time stalking your enemy because they are stalking you all the same. Both parties are equally hunter and hunted. Teamwork is another key component of this unique game because you need to work together and stick together if you want to survive. At the same time, you must be ruthless, leaving teammates to die when they are bleeding out because the enemy is probably using them as bait, drawing you in to heal him then popping out and popping you both. Lone wolfing isn't out of the option but being separated and ambushed by an enemy that knows how to work together is the worst possible position you can find yourself in. But sticking too close to each other is a bad idea as well because a well placed Molotov can kill an entire team.

In short, this is one of the best games I've ever played and I recommend you to get it and jump on Factions (if you can).